In many emergency situations it is of great importance to be able to quickly and accurately locate individuals. For example, in the event of a vehicular accident, public safety personnel may need to operate within an unfamiliar wooded area on short notice, in conditions of poor visibility due to smoke, flame or darkness. Accurate location information is vital to coordinate rescue operations and ensure the safety of rescue personnel. Police or military personnel may be faced with similar circumstances, in which accurate and timely location information can help avoid friendly-fire incidents and coordinate action against a criminal or enemy force.
Individuals faced with an emergency involving immediate danger to life or health of themselves or a colleague need to be able to accurately provide their location to emergency/rescue personnel, preferably without human intervention to enable rescue in the case where the individual in need is incapacitated, or all attention must be devoted to his/her protection. In all these circumstances, rapid and automated acquisition of the location of an individual to within a few meters can be critical in saving lives.
In addition, there are time when an individual is in a rural area needs to be located in an emergency. A mobile device an individual may be carrying may not be able to communicate because of poor signal strength to the mobile device in the rural area.
Prior art methods of accomplishing such location do not simultaneously meet the requirements of rapid location determination, automation, and accuracy. Navigation employing conventional maps and visual observation or dead reckoning are not readily automated and thus require time and attention by a human observer. Manual navigation may be vitiated in the case where visibility is impacted by flame or smoke, or where personnel are under hostile fire and unable to establish their location by patient observation.
Enhanced 911, (E911) is a location technology that enables mobile, or cellular phones and other mobile device such personal digital/data assistants (PDAs) to process 911 emergency calls and enable emergency services to locate a physical geographic position of the device and thus the caller. When a person makes a 911 call using a traditional phone with wires, the call is routed to the nearest public safety answering point (PSAP) that then distributes the emergency call to the proper emergency services. The PSAP receives the caller's phone number and the exact location of the phone from which the call was made. Prior to 1996, 911 callers using a mobile phone would have to access their service providers in order to get verification of subscription service before the call was routed to a PSAP. In 1996 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruled that a 911 call must go directly to the PSAP without receiving verification of service from a specific cellular service provider. The call must be handled by any available service carrier even if it is not the cellular phone customer's specific carrier.
The FCC has rolled out E911 in two phases. In 1998, Phase I required that mobile phone carriers identify the originating call's phone number and the location of the signal tower, or cell, accurate to within a mile. In 2001, Phase II required that each mobile phone company doing business in the United States must offer either handset- or network-based location detection capability so that the caller's location is determined by the geographic location of the cellular phone within 100 meter accuracy and not the location of the tower that is transmitting its signal. The FCC refers to this as Automatic Location Identification (ALI).
In addition to traditional cellular telephones, advances in technology have expanded the number and types of devices that are capable of initiating an emergency call for service that is routed to the appropriate PSAP based on the caller's location. Devices include, but are not limited to: computer programs that are executed on computing devices (Soft Phone), cellular telephones that are capable of data communications, wearable embedded devices embedded into home appliances, intelligent building control and monitoring systems, and intelligent roadways. The concept of an “Internet of Things” will allow any connected device to initiate communications with another device, service, or person, including a system within a PSAP.
An autonomous vehicle, automated, or self-driving vehicle is an automated vehicle capable of fulfilling the main transportation capabilities of a traditional vehicle. An automated vehicle is capable of sensing its own environment and safely navigating without human input.
In an interview with Forbes in February of 2015, Mark Fields, CEO of Ford estimated that fully autonomous vehicles would be available on the market within live years of 2015.
Expert members of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEE) have determined that automated vehicles will be the most viable form of intelligent transportation. They estimate that up to 75% of all vehicles will be autonomous or completed automated by about 2040.
It is desirable to determine a location of an automated vehicle or the occupant of an automated vehicle in an emergency situation.
There are many problems associated with determining a location of a network device and a caller who needs to place an E911 call or a person who sends a text to E911 in an emergency situation.
One problem is the network device and caller may be located in a remote area, rural area in the event of a natural disaster or terrorist attack when a local infrastructure may be compromised or an adequate communication signal not available to send an emergency message.
Another problem is that many E911 calls a misrouted to the wrong PSAP. This can delay the dispatch of emergencies services to the caller. Another problem is that existing mobile technology makes its difficult to accurately locate mobile devices.
Another problem is that triangulation based on time of arrival at multiple mobile-communications base stations (TDOA) has inadequate coverage and is insufficiently accurate unless supplemented by signals provided by local radios placed outside the facility by public safety personnel.
Another problem is that conventional radio-frequency-based location methods do a poor job of providing topological location within a building: that is, location relative to floors, walls, doors, partitions, stairways, and other features whose spatial extent is small but whose significance to a person's ability to move is great.
Another problem is that many wearable mobile devices are not “location-aware.” Location-aware devices are aware of their current geographic location. Mobile telephones and Global Positioning System (“GPS”) devices may be aware of their current geographic location. GPS devices typically determine their current geographic location by communicating with satellites. However, mobile telephones may only determine their current geographic location by communicating with a particular mobile phone interface or telephony switch that provides coverage to a geographic location such as a telephony “cell” but not an exact current geographic location within the cell.
Another problem is that it mobile devices are being allowed to send Short Message Services (SMS) text-to-911 messages to contact emergency services when an emergency occurs. The current physical location of such mobile devices sending text-to-911 messages needs to be determined.
Another problem is that many people are using automated vehicles such as those provided by GOOGLE and others. In many instances, the occupant of the automated vehicle has a disability (e.g., is blind, paralyzed, etc.) or a medical problem (e.g., vision problem, speech problem, etc.) and is not capable of communicating with emergency personal after an accident or during an emergency situation (e.g., terrorist event, etc.). The occupant of the automated vehicle may also have a mobile device. Even if the occupant of the automated vehicle is not disabled or does not have a medical problem, the location of such automated vehicles needs to be determined in an emergency situation.
Thus, there exists a critical need for a method of locating individuals making an E911 call from a network device in an automated vehicle in an urban or rural area that is rapid, automated, accurate, simple and inexpensive to employ, and does not require manual intervention from a person using the mobile network device to be located.